After playing Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines to death, I'm currently looking at Troika's other titles Arcanum: of Steamworks & Magick Obscura and Temple of Elemental Evil. Has anybody played these? If so, are they any good and why?

"They should rename the team to the Washington Government Sucks. Put Obama on the helmet. Line the entire walls of the stadium with the actual text of the ACA.

Fix their home team score on the board to the debt clock, they can win every game 17,000,000,000,000 to 24. Losing team gets taxed by the IRS 100%, then droned."

Like Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Arcanum: of Steamworks & Magick Obscura and Temple of Elemental Evil are both good games that suffer from poor QC.

Temple of Elemental Evil Playing this game is the closest I have come to P'n'P D&D. While I do prefer to play this module as P'n'P (Social interaction). This is still an excellent game after you have downloaded the mod pack from Circle of Eight.

Since Arcanum was developed by some of same people that developed the original Fallout. It has a very similar feel. The biggest difference is the setting of course and the combat. The combat while real time-turn based it tougher in Arcanum. You definitely will want the official 1.0.7.4 patch. The best unofficial patch that I know of is here. I would stay away from any mod made by Chris Beddoes especially the Carcanum mod.

Not all those who wander are lost.-J.R.R. Tolkien

I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it but by it I see everything else - C.S. Lewis

I just got Arcanum (thanks to Corinths fanboyism), and it's a blast. Background: Nietzche poster boy brought a smile to my face, and it stayed on thanks to a nice story (behold, this dwarf is the incarnation of an elf) and some rather humiliating defeats (rats).

OK, I just finished my first playthrough of Arcanum and I really enjoyed it, but I enjoyed it more for it's plot (which was quite good) than it's gameplay. The spells were great (Disintegrate FTW!), but the combat system sucked (do spellcasting party NPCs ever cast any offensive spells?), and the lack of any control over party NPCs (unlike BG2) was a real letdown. The game was also very easy (also unlike BG2).

There were also a few nuances that were present in BG2 that were notably absent from Arcanum such as banter between party NPCs and movement animations while standing still that would have enriched the overall quality of the game. Character development (of the PC, that is) is this game's strongpoint, IMO. The possibilities are practically endless. I rate this game as an 8 overall. For comparison, I rate BG2 as a 9. Arcanum's story was clearly superior to BG2's though.

Drog Black Tooth has done a great job with his patch because I rarely encountered any bugginess aside from the saving indoors thing (which can't be fixed AFAIK), and I only remember seeing two typos in all of the dialogue that I read.

I'll probably play through it again as a gunslinging technologist.

@Pavlos: You are a sick and irreverent man.

"They should rename the team to the Washington Government Sucks. Put Obama on the helmet. Line the entire walls of the stadium with the actual text of the ACA.

Fix their home team score on the board to the debt clock, they can win every game 17,000,000,000,000 to 24. Losing team gets taxed by the IRS 100%, then droned."